5 ms·

I'm going to be the one to argue here that this is a good thing. The barrel jack has had a long good run, yes. There will definitely be a period of painful tran

I'm going to be the one to argue here that this is a good thing. The barrel jack has had a long good run, yes. There will definitely be a period of painful transition, yes. In the long run, this will be good. The barrel jack is a hack and has a tonne of downsides. We hacked stereo into a mono plug. We then hacked a mic into the stereo plug. Hotplug detection is a patented minefield mess. It's a big plug that tends to collect cruft and makes it difficult to waterproof devices. Eventually we'll have USB-C DACs that are cheap and small enough to keep connected to the ends of your headphones. For people that don't care about audio quality, a $5 Chinese-branded adapter from Amazon will be indistinguishable in a few years.

bodyfour 10y ago
They also hacked volume+pause controls onto the jack using flaky impedance tricks. I've had bad luck getting those controls working with TRRS extension cables. People also use active noise-cancelling headphones that require their own battery. I'm a bit nervous about the transition away from the classic 3.5 jack, especially since it looks like it'll probably be a standards war between the Apple and Android worlds. There are, however, some nice potential advantages.
- oasisbob 10y ago
  > I've had bad luck getting those controls working with TRRS extension cables. Ugh. That. A tip: always ensure that the extension cable is attached to the auxiliary device (eg headset) first. One of those flaky impedance tricks is to try and detect the microphone through it's impedance when the TRRS jack senses a plug. If you plug the extension cable in first, the device detects the plug in the jack, can't detect the microphone (or whatever other magical device it's looking for - like volume controls), and disables anything it doesn't detect until the plug is removed. ( At least that's how my Macbook works. )
cm2187 10y ago
Do you think we will have USB-C ports on iPhones?
kirykl 10y ago
biggest hack being credit card reading dongles
- rplst8 10y ago
  This is likely why Apple is so interested in killing the 3.5 mm jack. They want a cut of Square's business.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    Comms can always be done over bluetooth or wifi. In fact, I don't get why Square didn't go this path - I know that I would break the connectors every other day.
    - xemdetia 10y ago
      It makes a whole lot more sense from a testing and EMF perspective. A connector is generally much more predictable than wireless- and the user interface is a lot easier to understand and troubleshoot by an everyday person. Getting bluetooth to pair or setting a phone into a hotspot and then joining the device to the wifi network would be a support call nightmare. I think it makes infinitely more sense to give you something you plug in. Attackers can't hijack the signal in interesting ways, and nearly anyone who would use a Square device would be familiar with how to plug things into a 3.5mm jack.
      - mschuster91 10y ago
        > Getting bluetooth to pair or setting a phone into a hotspot and then joining the device to the wifi network would be a support call nightmare. People are used to pair Bluetooth devices these days - cars, wireless headphones, keyboards, mice... it's incredibly easy. As for Wifi setup, Edimax does something really clever in their Wifi smart plugs - upon first powerup, the device creates an AP. The phone app connects to this IP, transmits the Wifi connection details and then disconnects.
    - artimaeis 10y ago
rplst8 10y ago
Honestly, I don't know why people complain about stuff like this. Please expand upon the tonne of downsides, because in practice, none of the issues you have mentioned have ever impacted my use of the jack. Keeping a small cable sized DAC attached to my headphones (once they finally exist) is not my concern. The concern is getting manufacturers to agree to a standard. So instead of one DAC, I'll need more than that, or some set of adapters for whatever that plug ends up being.
- regularfry 10y ago
  Jack plugs are just an awful design. If you've ever pulled a jack plug out of its socket and had the speakers make a horrible loud crack, you've experienced it: you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Their only saving grace is how robust they are, but that's mostly thrown away by 3.5mm ones, where either the plug bends with remarkable ease, or the plug doesn't bend and the socket gets knocked out of shape with the slightest provocation. There are better analogue standards around. There always have been. It's mostly a lost cause.
  - rplst8 10y ago
    > you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Wrong. This is evidence of a cheaply desigined output circuit. There are many jacks that include muting switches. They are spring loaded, and when contact is lost, a muting circuit is enabled. And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem not the jack's. Any analog connection disconnected source side first could result in this behaivor. It can be mitigated by some circiut on the amplifier side that detects a loss of connection. The technology exists, some cheaper electronics just fail to implement it. Noise on disconnection could happen with a digital circuit too if the designer of the amplifier/speaker fails to account for that case.
    - Faaak 10y ago
      > And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem Sadly, people don't care.. Also, my jack is connected to my speakers from behind. I don't want to bend my arm in strange positions every time I want to disconnect the jack.
coldpie 10y ago
I would accept a standardized USB-C replacement for the 3.5mm jack, but I don't see any evidence of that happening.
collyw 10y ago
How many waterproof devices are out there?

bodyfour 10y ago

They also hacked volume+pause controls onto the jack using flaky impedance tricks. I've had bad luck getting those controls working with TRRS extension cables. People also use active noise-cancelling headphones that require their own battery. I'm a bit nervous about the transition away from the classic 3.5 jack, especially since it looks like it'll probably be a standards war between the Apple and Android worlds. There are, however, some nice potential advantages.

oasisbob 10y ago
> I've had bad luck getting those controls working with TRRS extension cables. Ugh. That. A tip: always ensure that the extension cable is attached to the auxiliary device (eg headset) first. One of those flaky impedance tricks is to try and detect the microphone through it's impedance when the TRRS jack senses a plug. If you plug the extension cable in first, the device detects the plug in the jack, can't detect the microphone (or whatever other magical device it's looking for - like volume controls), and disables anything it doesn't detect until the plug is removed. ( At least that's how my Macbook works. )

cm2187 10y ago

Do you think we will have USB-C ports on iPhones?

kirykl 10y ago

biggest hack being credit card reading dongles

rplst8 10y ago
This is likely why Apple is so interested in killing the 3.5 mm jack. They want a cut of Square's business.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  Comms can always be done over bluetooth or wifi. In fact, I don't get why Square didn't go this path - I know that I would break the connectors every other day.
  - xemdetia 10y ago
    It makes a whole lot more sense from a testing and EMF perspective. A connector is generally much more predictable than wireless- and the user interface is a lot easier to understand and troubleshoot by an everyday person. Getting bluetooth to pair or setting a phone into a hotspot and then joining the device to the wifi network would be a support call nightmare. I think it makes infinitely more sense to give you something you plug in. Attackers can't hijack the signal in interesting ways, and nearly anyone who would use a Square device would be familiar with how to plug things into a 3.5mm jack.
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      > Getting bluetooth to pair or setting a phone into a hotspot and then joining the device to the wifi network would be a support call nightmare. People are used to pair Bluetooth devices these days - cars, wireless headphones, keyboards, mice... it's incredibly easy. As for Wifi setup, Edimax does something really clever in their Wifi smart plugs - upon first powerup, the device creates an AP. The phone app connects to this IP, transmits the Wifi connection details and then disconnects.
  - artimaeis 10y ago

rplst8 10y ago

Honestly, I don't know why people complain about stuff like this. Please expand upon the tonne of downsides, because in practice, none of the issues you have mentioned have ever impacted my use of the jack. Keeping a small cable sized DAC attached to my headphones (once they finally exist) is not my concern. The concern is getting manufacturers to agree to a standard. So instead of one DAC, I'll need more than that, or some set of adapters for whatever that plug ends up being.

regularfry 10y ago
Jack plugs are just an awful design. If you've ever pulled a jack plug out of its socket and had the speakers make a horrible loud crack, you've experienced it: you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Their only saving grace is how robust they are, but that's mostly thrown away by 3.5mm ones, where either the plug bends with remarkable ease, or the plug doesn't bend and the socket gets knocked out of shape with the slightest provocation. There are better analogue standards around. There always have been. It's mostly a lost cause.
- rplst8 10y ago
  > you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Wrong. This is evidence of a cheaply desigined output circuit. There are many jacks that include muting switches. They are spring loaded, and when contact is lost, a muting circuit is enabled. And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem not the jack's. Any analog connection disconnected source side first could result in this behaivor. It can be mitigated by some circiut on the amplifier side that detects a loss of connection. The technology exists, some cheaper electronics just fail to implement it. Noise on disconnection could happen with a digital circuit too if the designer of the amplifier/speaker fails to account for that case.
  - Faaak 10y ago
    > And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem Sadly, people don't care.. Also, my jack is connected to my speakers from behind. I don't want to bend my arm in strange positions every time I want to disconnect the jack.

coldpie 10y ago

I would accept a standardized USB-C replacement for the 3.5mm jack, but I don't see any evidence of that happening.

collyw 10y ago

How many waterproof devices are out there?